[3.] Thirdly, It will appear that the condition of persecutors is the most sad and deplorable condition of all conditions under heaven, if you loill but seriously consider and lay to heart the sore Judgments that are threatened, and that have been executed upon them : Deut. xxx. 7, ' And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them which hate thee, which persecuted thee ;' Neh. ix. 9-11, ' And didst see the afflictions of our fathers in Egypt, and heardest their cry by the Bed Sea : and shewed signs and wonders upon Pharaoh, and on all his servants, and on the people of his land ; for thou knewest that they dealt proudly against them. So didst thou get thee a name, as it is this day. And thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land ; and their
^ This house is thought by many to be the house where the apostles commonly had their meetings. - The like speech you have in that Pa. cxx. 7. Vaani uzephillah, But I prayer. =* Plutarch in the life of Numa.
270 THE NECESSITY, EXCELLENCY, KARITY, [Heb. XII. 14.
persecutors thou threwest into the deeps, as a stone into the mighty waters. '1 Pharaoh and his princes and people were very great oppres- sors and persecutors of God's Israel, and therefore God visited them with ten dreadful plagues, one after another ; but when, after all these plagues, God saw that their enmity against his people was as great, or rather greater than ever, and that they were still set upon persecuting of his people, then God takes up Pharaoh and his mighty host, and throws them as a stone into the mighty waters, Exod. xv. 10 ; Ps. vii. 11-13, ' God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will whet his sword ; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready. He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors.' God whets before he strikes, he bends his bow before he shoots, he prepares instruments of death before he brings men down to the grave, his hand takes hold on judgment before his judgments take hold of men ; but if all these warnings will not serve their turns, God will overturn them with a witness. ' He ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors,' or as the Hebrew has it, ' against the hot burning per- secutors.' 2 God hath his hot burning arrows for hot burning perse- cutors. Let persecutors be never so hot against the saints, God will be as hot against them; and let them be never so much inflamed against the people of God, God will be as much inflamed against them: Jer. XX. 10, 11, ' For I heard the defaming of many, fear on every side. Keport, said they, and we will report it. All my familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him. But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one : therefore my per- secutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail, they shall be greatly ashamed, for they shall not prosper ; their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten.'^ When malicious and mischievous persecutors have done all they can to vex and fret, to daunt and affright, to dismay and discourage the people of God, then God will terrify the most terrible among them, and ' they shall not prevail nor prosper, yea, they shall stumble and fall, they shall be ashamed and confounded.' Isa. xxxiii. 1, ' Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee : when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled ; and when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee.' When the time is expired that God has prefixed for his people's sufferings, then God will retaliate upon their persecutors, then they that spoiled his people shaU be spoiled, and they that dealt per- fidiously and treacherously with them, shall be dealt perfidiously and treacherously withal : 2 Thes. i. 6, ' Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you.' It is but justice that God should trouble those that are the troublers of his people ; it is but justice that persecutors should be punished, and that
^ As you may see in the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and twelfth chapters of Exodus.
' Q^p7^7, from p7l, and from dalah is daleketh, that signifies a burning ague.
* After the reign of Decius, under whom the seventh persecution began, God sent a plague ten years together, which made divers places of the world desolate, especially where the persecution most raged, &c.
HeB. XII. 14.] AND BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 271
the persecuted should be righted ; it is but justice that God should trouble them in both worlds, who would be troublers of his people in both worlds ; it is but justice that God should trouble them to all eternity, who would be a-troubling of his people to all eternity, if their power were but answerable to their malice. And God has even in this life been a swift witness against the persecutors of his people. Cain was a persecutor, and his brother s blood pursued him to hell ; Pharaoh was a great oppressor and persecutor of his people, and God followed him with plague upon plague, and judgment upon judgment, till he had overthrown him in the Ked Sea ; Saul was a persecutor, and falls by his own sword ; Haman was a great persecutor of the saints, and he was feasted with the king one day, and made a feast for crows the next ; Pashur was a great persecutor, he smote the prophet Jeremiah, and put him in the stocks, and God threatened to make him a Magor-missdbih, a terror to himself and to all his friends, Jer. XX. 1-3; Zedekiah was a persecutor, he smote the prophet Micaiah- on the cheek for dealing plainly and faithfully with the kings, and in the day of trouble and distress he goes from chamber to chamber to hide himself, 1 Kings xxii. ; Jezebel was a great persecutor, she slew the prophets of God, and she was thrown out of a window, and eaten up of dogs, 1 Kings xviii. 4-13 ; 2 Kings ix. 30 ; Herod the Great, who caused the babes of Bethlehem to be slain, hoping thereby to destroy Christ, shortly after was plagued by God with an incurable disease, having a slow and slack fire continually tormenting his inward parts ; he had a vehement and greedy desire to eat, and yet nothing would satisfy him ; his inward bowels rotted, his breath was short and stinking, some of his members rotted, and in all his members he had so violent a cramp that nature was not able to bear it ; and so growing mad with pain, he died miserably. i
Herod Antipas, who beheaded John Baptist, not long after falling into disgrace with the Koman emperor, with his incestuous Herodias, the suggester of that murder, they were banished, and fell into such misery and penury, that they ended their wretched lives with much shame and misery.^